Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14291 for PC and Mobile

UPDATE 3/24: Today we are releasing this build to the list of devices that will be capable of receiving updates as part of the Windows Insider Program except the Lumia 635. We will add the Lumia 635 at a later date. Going forward – these devices can receive new builds from our Development Branch that we release to the Fast and Slow rings. As we stated previously, only devices which are eligible to receive the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will be able to get preview builds from the Development Branch.

Hi everyone,

Today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14291 for both PC and Mobile to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. There are some very cool new things in this build, including one of the top requested features by Windows Insiders – extensions for Microsoft Edge!

Here’s what’s new in Build 14291

Extensions in Microsoft Edge: Today we are very excited to introduce extensions for Microsoft Edge. To try out an extension, just click on “More” (…) at the top right in Microsoft Edge and click “Extensions” to open the Extensions pane and click “Get extensions”. You can try out the Mouse Gestures, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite extensions today with more on the way. Extensions are only available on PC. For more information on extensions for Microsoft Edge, check out this blog post from Drew.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKAywBrQeAw?rel=0]

Pinned Tabs in Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Edge now lets you pin tabs, making it super easy to keep your most-used sites and web apps always available. To pin a tab, right-click on the tab you want to pin and choose “Pin tab”. To unpin a tab, right-click on the pinned tab you want to unpin and choose “Unpin tab”. Pinned tabs always appear at the start of the tab row, and only showing the site’s favicon. Pinned tabs don’t show a close button, so you won’t accidentally close them. Pinned tabs that are in your Microsoft Edge window when you close the app will come back the next time you open Microsoft Edge.

Other Microsoft Edge Improvements: You can now copy any link into your clipboard, and right-click on the address bar in Microsoft Edge and choose “Paste and go” from the context menu. Microsoft Edge pastes the URL into the address bar, and navigates to the site. You can also copy words to your clipboard, and choose “Paste and search”.

We have also made it easier to close tabs in Microsoft Edge on your mobile device, especially on devices with a larger screen size by increasing the size of the close button for tabs on the Tabs page.

Updated Maps app: This build includes a updated Maps app for Windows 10 that brings a more lightweight, scalable, and consistent UI as well as underlying architecture improvements and new features for you to try!

One-tap access to search and directions from anywhere, even on your phone. This is great especially for one-handed use.

You can view multiple searches and directions at the same time, on the same map as they are layered on top of each other and you can use tabs or the map to switch between them.

You can now minimize search results, directions, and location info to enjoy more of the map, while keeping them in easy reach.

You can see labels for your search results directly on the map. No more numbers to match between the map and the list.

Cortana will give you turn-by-turn directions (if Cortana is enabled).

We have improved the logic for nearby searches so you should see better (closer) results.

We have added the ability to search for your favorite city in the 3D cities list so no more scrolling forever to get to the city you want.

You can now access your favorites offline and add notes to them.

We have updated the turn-by-turn design to improve glanceability and landscape layout.

Updated Alarms & Clock app: We have pushed out an update to the Alarm & Clock app that introduces a new inline time picker and improved design for creating and editing alarms and timers.

Japanese one-handed kana touch keyboard: You can now choose one-handed kana touch keyboard for Japanese text typing. Type text in the same familiar way you would on your mobile device. One-handed keyboard is smaller than full-size touch keyboard, so it doesn’t hide your desktop too much. It can also be placed anywhere on the desktop. If you want to type with left hand, bring one-handed touch keyboard to the left side.

Japanese Lined-mode Text Input Canvas: Now, you can have a new experience with the Japanese lined-mode Text Input Canvas. It provides you natural and intuitive text input for people who enter Japanese text. Edit the written characters, such as striking out inked text and modifying characters, can be easily done with a pen.

Introducing Feedback Hub: As we announced last week, we are bringing together the Insider Hub and Windows Feedback apps into a single app called the Feedback Hub. And the Feedback Hub is now available in this build for both PC and Mobile. The Feedback Hub carries over all of the best things from the previous two apps plus a few new things. When you open Feedback Hub for the first time, you will see a search box at the top so you can quickly find and upvote feedback items from other Insiders or submit new feedback. You will also notice that Announcements and Quests show up together in a single feed under “What’s new”. When you submit new feedback to us, we have added a new description field so you can explain in more detail the feedback you are sending to us. The most helpful feedback for us includes a brief title that summarizes your feedback, then you can use the new description field to provide more detail, for example: the steps that an engineer could take to recreate a problem, or more information about a feature suggestion. And you’ll start seeing Microsoft engineers leaving comments on your feedback too! The familiar experience for browsing feedback is still a click away, just navigate to the Feedback tab from the left-hand navigation menu. We’re just starting to add capability to the new unified app and we’re excited to take this first step. We’re excited to hear what you think of the new Feedback Hub, go to Apps and Games > Feedback Hub and tell us what you think.

Here are a few known issues for Feedback Hub to take note of:

We have a bug where the Feedback Hub will crash right after submitting feedback if you launched Feedback Hub using the hardware shortcuts for opening the app (VOL + POWER DOWN on mobile, Windows key + Shift + ? on PC). Don’t worry – we’re fixing this in the next flight, and your feedback is successfully submitted.

If you have previously pinned the Windows Feedback app to Start, you will notice it remains as a “dead tile”. We are fixing this in future builds. You can unpin and re-pin the new Feedback Hub app to Start.

We have removed the screenshot capture feature and instead allow you to upload screenshots via the upload screenshot button. Hint: use VOL UP + POWER on mobile to take a screenshot, and on PC use Windows key + Print screen.

Here’s what’s fixed for PC

This issue causing the notification area (“systray”) to look out of alignment when turning on the “always show all icons in the notification area” should now be fixed.

We fixed the issue where connectivity to older Wi-Fi networks using the WEP encryption security method may be broken.

We fixed an issue where the “X” to close the “Find of Page” toolbar in Microsoft Edge is displayed off screen on 8-inch devices when in portrait mode.

We fixed an issue where the USB icon in the notification area was reverting to the old icon when ejecting drives.

We fixed an issue where clicking the suggested search in Microsoft Edge resulted in a URL to the search as the search string.

Here’s what’s fixed for Mobile

We fixed the issue where connectivity to older Wi-Fi networks using the WEP encryption security method may be broken.

We fixed an issue resulting in slower text input speed the more words were typed.

We have improved Word Flow recognition of longer words.

The All apps list has been updated to now follow the “Make Text Larger” ease of access setting.

We fixed an issue where Settings would sometimes list unresolved app names under Extras.

We fixed an issue where touch targets could be out of alignment in the Photos picker.

Known issues for PC

We continue to investigate an issue in which some Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book devices experience a freeze or hang and all input such as keyboard/trackpad and touch do not work. The workaround is to hold down the power button to force the device to hard-reboot.

Your PC may freeze when plugging in an Xbox One or Xbox 360 controller and other gamepads in this build.

If you use Hyper-V and have a Virtual Switch configured for your network adapter, you may see an error indicator (red-colored “X”) for your network adapter in the notification area of your taskbar. The error indicator is incorrect and your network adapter should continue to work just fine.

We are seeing reports of some apps such as QQ crashing. We are currently investigating, and this bug may also impact older apps such as Windows Live Mail and Expression Encoder 4.

If you have Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Internet Security, or the Kaspersky Total Security Suite installed on your PC there is a known driver bug that prevents these programs from working as expected in builds from the Development Branch. We are partnering with Kaspersky to fix this issue for a future release, but at this time there are no known workarounds. While this issue is present, we recommend using Windows Defender or another third party anti-virus product of your choice to remain protected.

Known issues for Mobile

If you reset your phone on this build (Build 14291) and restore your phone from a backup, restore will fail to install apps from your backup’s apps list leaving blank grey titles on Start. If you delete the grey tiles and attempt to reinstall the same apps from the Store, you will not get app data restored. The next backup will over-write the app backup data as well. To avoid hitting this bug, avoid resetting your phone on this build. If for some reason you do need to reset your device on this build, don’t restore your phone from a backup and you should turn off backup for apps and OS data to avoid creating a corrupt backup via Settings > Update & Security > Backup.

If you have a Microsoft Band 1 or 2 paired to your phone, it will no longer sync after updating to this build due to a system API failure that occurs after the update. If you want to get your Band syncing with your phone again – you can temporarily change the language of your phone as a short term workaround until we release a fix. Additionally, you can also choose to reset your phone to get out of this state – however you may experience this update issue again with the next build until we fix this issue. This issue may also impact Skype video and audio calls.

The Gadgets app will not detect the Microsoft Display Dock on phones running Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview builds, and thus cannot update the firmware version. If you have a dock which has already been updated to version 4 then this will not affect you. If you have a dock that has not been updated, then you may experience some minor issues with USB-C stability. You will still be able to use your dock and Continuum.

There is a new option under Settings > Update & security for Windows Insider Program. This is a work-in-progress option to improve managing your Windows Insider Program settings on your device. Right now, if you go to this option it crashes the Settings app. Please continue to use the Windows Insider app to manage your settings for now.

As always – thank you for being Windows Insiders and make sure to send us feedback on any issues you run into with these builds in the Feedback Hub.